The Contender

A vast improvement over his debut Deterrence— which should probably just have been called "I Like Fail-Safe" — former critic Rod Lurie’s political thriller is a sometimes lead-footed stomp through delicate issues, though it features a perfectly cast performance by Joan Allen as a Laine Hanson, a senator whose appointment to the Vice Presidency sets off a salacious scandal. (She ought to be perfectly cast; the script was written for her.) The film admirably comes down on the side of personal privacy, but the insistence with which it keeps showing the scratchy film of a college-age Laine involved in a frat-house gangbang does more to turn the stomach than probe the issues. Jeff Bridges concocts an amusingly laid-back Commander in Chief, while Sam Elliott is well cast against type as his manipulative Chief of Staff. As the venomous, though not wholly vilified, senator who tries to orchestrate Laine’s downfall, Gary Oldman is barely recognizable, and his unusually (for him) naturalistic performance is a welcome change of pace. But despite the generally fine acting, there’s nothing really filmic about the way the story is told; it’s competent, but rarely more.

—Sam Adams

(See Sam Adams’ interview with actress Joan Allen, actor Jeff Bridges and writer-director Rod Lurie.)